


Five Times Tony Stopped Bruce from Leaving

by dith



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-08
Updated: 2012-09-08
Packaged: 2017-11-13 19:20:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dith/pseuds/dith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes a while before Bruce realizes how badly Tony doesn't want him to go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Tony Stopped Bruce from Leaving

**Author's Note:**

> Can be read as gen or as slash, if you squint.

The first time Tony tried to stop Bruce from leaving, Tony tried to entice him with lab toys, and Bruce took it simply for showing off. That was easy to do with Tony; for him showing off was a habit, like scratching himself in public. It was obvious that Tony was waving his technology resources in Bruce's face, tackily, like a 70s disco dancer with his shirt open to his navel and too many gold chains.

Bruce found it endearing. A come-on that blatant was kind of cute, and besides, it was only a pleasant distraction from all of the saving-the-world-from-Loki tasks at hand.

###

The second time Tony tried to stop Bruce from leaving, it involved shawarma and guilt. Bruce was in fact very fond of shawarma; it reminded him of the döner kebap he used to have in Germany, when he was allowed to go to conferences and give papers, when he was a scientist and not a fugitive. Those days were a long time ago, but like any middle-aged man, Bruce treasured them.

The guilt, however, was a much stronger incentive. As it turned out, the Hulk hadn't really destroyed as much of the Stark Tower as was often ascribed to the Hulk when he appeared in public. But New York was definitely damaged, and even though the Hulk-hand gouges in the walls here and there were nothing compared to the way the space turtle-lizards had flattened entire buildings, Bruce really didn't like looking at the rubble.

Tony offered him the chance to help Stark Industries on a few little things Tony was working on that would help put those buildings back up in record time, and with fewer environmental contaminants in their makeup to boot. So, Bruce was really going to take him up on it from the get-go. 

Tony was the first person who'd offered Bruce friendship without fear in a very long time. Bruce admitted to himself that he liked that. What he didn't admit to himself, but what was also true, is that he needed and craved that kind of company. His levels of self-loathing dipped sharply when he was around Tony. Part of it was the green-guy pep talks Tony insisted on delivering from time to time, whether Bruce wanted them or not. But part of it was the simple knowledge that here was someone who knew who he was, what he was, and who never cringed away.

So Bruce borrowed Tony's shirts and Tony's rooms and ate Tony's food and as much as he felt himself capable of enjoying anything, he even enjoyed himself, at least when he forgot to notice and stop himself.

###

The third time got weird. Government flunkies came to take Bruce away, and Tony only got about ten minutes' notice that they were advancing on the tower. It was bad luck to be in New York, rather than in L.A. where there was so much more space around the house, but there were a lot more escape routes out of New York for a guy on foot, after all.

"Unacceptable," was all Tony said, and Bruce's goodbye turned into being escorted to the helipad before he remembered agreeing to anything. He was still arguing with Tony on the phone as the heli swooped away between the New York skyscrapers.

"Tony, you're making this difficult for no reason," Bruce said, even as he admired the Chrysler Building with the sun setting on it. "We both knew it was just a matter of time. It's time for me to move on."

"No," was all Tony said again, his voice just very slightly muffled by the phone's tiny speaker. "The pilot is going to drop you at MacArthur; take the plane I've got waiting there to Montreal and just chill. Let me clear this up; I have a few contacts."

Bruce looked out at the wisps of clouds in the sky, down into the concrete jungle, a man who knew if he jumped out in mid-flight, nothing would change for him at all. "And if I decide not to follow your instructions?" he said mildly.

"Well, if you hulk out over Queens it's going to be noticeable, and I'm kind of hoping you're not in the mood to put on a show. Look, give me a night and a day, I've got a place in the Plateau, it's very cool, very opposite-of-green-rage type thing, you're going to love it, get an early night, poutine in the morning, you'll be home tomorrow."

"Home." Bruce just shook his head. That was a word he never used any more. Now that he thought about it, Tony made jokes about home all the time. "Honey, I'm home!", he announced once in the lab after a trip out for coffee had turned into a sixteen-hour distraction including a side trip to Spain. But he seldom used the word without an ironic inflection.

He seemed to mean it now.

The whole thing felt weird to Bruce but he just wasn't in the mood to fuss about it. He wasn't super-tired, he wasn't damaged from some fight with aliens, he wasn't worried about some loved one being held hostage somewhere; he just wasn't in the mood to fuss about it.

"Yeah, okay," he said and hung up on Tony as the pilot swerved east.

###

The fourth time was way too personal.

Bruce had been held sedated in the rathole warehouse basement for about five days when the Avengers pulled him out. He looked like it had been fifty.

He had deeply sunken eyes, more gray hair, and a yellowish cast to his skin that had nothing to do with the Hulk but made him look like a plague survivor.

They took him to the Tower and wrapped him in blankets. Pepper had the finest restaurants in New York send quarts of chicken broth. Steve brought him a stack of books, and Natasha and Clint guarded him from every angle on alternate watches. It was still two days before he spoke.

Tony was just sitting on a chair, reading, next to the daybed where they'd installed Bruce, with water and chicken broth and books all within easy reach. Tony had left an iPad on the table; Bruce didn't touch it, but was staring at its glassy black surface when he said, "They told me they were going to cut off my hands."

Tony just looked up, looked at Bruce with his dark shining eyes, and listened. 

"That's a weird thing, right?, for the most dangerous person on the planet to be afraid. But I couldn't stop being afraid. That's crazy, right? I knew it wouldn't be permanent. I was pretty sure that when the other guy showed up, they would regenerate. But I kept imagining how I couldn't write or do anything with a computer if I didn't have my hands."

Tony kept listening. It was the longest Bruce had ever heard him be quiet.

"I didn't know what to do, I could barely think I was so out of it the whole time, but I was awake enough to know what they were saying to me and I would have done anything to keep them from doing that but I couldn't figure out what they wanted me to do." He looked up, dark hair with silver threads falling over his eyes, which were unreadable, shadowed in the dim evening light, but Tony could tell Bruce was turning to him. "It's crazy, right, that I couldn't figure out what they wanted me to do? I'm smart. I should have figured it out."

Bruce bent his head, rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyelids. " _You_ would have figured it out."

Tony looked down, tapped the tablet he was reading. In a voice that was utterly Tony, but somehow a little quieter, pitched a little lower than usual, he said, "The cocktail of drugs they were giving you included a hallucinogen and an amnesiac agent as well as enough tranquilizers to down a horse. I mean that literally, in doses repeated every hour on the hour. You are jaundiced because your liver is toast. I'd worry about it more except I'm sure the other guy _will_ fix it the next time we need him, which, I'm glad to say, isn't right now."

Tony pierced the gloom clinging to Bruce's head with a look. "On that cocktail of drugs I would have been dead in three hours."

Bruce's head turned and he finally met Tony's eyes.

Tony went on, "I know how much you enjoy blaming yourself, but really, isn't this a bit much even for you? You were kidnapped, you were tortured, you survived. That's a yay for the home team, in case you weren't sure."

Bruce's head tilted to the side a little. It might have been acknowledgement. Tony saw the corner of Bruce's mouth twitch a little.

"Sooooo," Tony dragged it out, "feel free to sit in here feeling sorry for yourself for, oh, at least a week, and let Pepper fuss over you - she loves that, by the way, you're doing her a favor by giving her a willing target - and then you'll need to get up and go on and be here, with us, the next time we need you."

Bruce's eyes closed.

"Yeah, Tony, I will. I just --"

He paused. Tony paused with him.

Bruce finally went on. "Okay, so I'm feeling sorry for myself, you're right, and now I feel bad about that, too, which I'm sure was at least part of your intention --"

"I regret nothing."

"-- I just..." Bruce kept looking down at his thin hands twisted together. "Tony, it really sucks being me, but it sucks worse knowing it's never going to end."

There was quiet for a minute or two, then Tony said, "That's the sort of talk that would worry me, Dr. Banner, except that I know, perhaps better than anyone, how much you would hate to miss whatever you're going to discover tomorrow."

Bruce didn't move, didn't look up.

Tony stood, moved over to the daybed and sat down next to Bruce. He went back to reading.

Bruce sighed and closed his eyes.

Around three a.m. local time the rathole warehouse where Bruce had been held exploded, from causes unknown. The organization that had funded it found their financial accounts - thousands of accounts all over the world - frozen through a myriad of means that it took them years to figure out and sort through, by which time the organization had completely fallen apart, as organizations always do without money, and most of the men at the top of it killed each other along the way.

Only two of the thugs who had been holding Bruce had survived the rescue. They were offered plea bargains of prison for life by their respective lawyers, both of whom warned them with word for word the same speech: "Take it. It's all you're going to get. And when you're in prison? Watch your back."

###

But the fifth time Bruce wasn't taken unawares. He wasn't being hunted like a rabbit, and he could admit to himself that he liked not being hunted for a change. But being around the rest of the Avengers all the time made them a sort of target that he didn't want them to be. And as long as he remained in one place, he knew the United States' military, or something comparable, would be looking to find him, study him, and ultimately, use him.

"This is fun," he told Tony, standing in the other man's workshop, among the tang of the motor oil and electrical arcs. "Pretending we live here, that we can live here. It's nice. I like working on science, and I like working sometimes with you. And I know it's convenient to have the other guy have a short commute to whatever's threatening the developed world this week. Funny how the aliens never attack Thailand."

He walked around to where Tony was leaning on one fist, tapping on a keyboard, staring at a screen, pretending not to listen.

"But it can't last forever, and I'd like to move on now, while it's quiet, while there's no crisis, and see if I can't find a new place while there aren't so many people on my trail."

"A new bolt hole."

Bruce ducked his head as he smiled. "I'm kind of big for a rabbit, but -- "

"A lair, a temporary asylum, a blind. For one of the world's greatest minds. In, no doubt, a country where the electrical grid only provides power for two hours every alternate Thursday."

"Some people can live without espresso, Tony." Bruce kept his voice level.

"But why should you? When will the self-flagellation end? Last week you improved the osmotic action of a drug delivery system that will probably save thousands of lives this year alone. We filed the information without patent. Where is the bad here?"

"I'm starting to feel like there's a leash here I didn't know about and didn't agree to," Bruce said mildly, even as his arms folded together gave away a certain rising level of irritation. "Did I sign a lease or something?"

While Tony hadn't met his eyes once since he walked in, Bruce noticed now that Tony still didn't meet his eyes, even as he sounded as though the words he was saying were being dragged out of him with hooks.

"Don't go."

"It's -

"Bruce."

Bruce stood still.

Tony kept sitting. "Okay, look, I know I'm an asshole, you know I'm an asshole, everyone knows it so that's a given, right? And we move on. People - aren't my thing. I mean - I'm not good - at people."

His eyes flicked up and out but then went back to whatever he was looking at that wasn't Bruce.

"I built the suit - alone. I rediscovered Palladium - alone. I built a _particle accelerator_ in my _garage_ , alone."

Tony scrubbed both his hands over his hair.

"I fucked up my relationship with Pepper, alone. We all know she had no part in that."

Tony's voice was suddenly extremely raw. 

"I've never wanted to be alone. But I almost always am."

Bruce listened, almost disbelieving, a part of his mind noting clinically the rise in Tony's respiration rate and the tension in the hand he flexed and closed, flexed and closed. He still said nothing.

Tony still didn't look at Bruce. "When you're here... I'm not."

Bruce looked at Tony's profile, wondering how many times in his life Tony had actually had a conversation about his own feelings. He suspected the count could be accomplished on one hand. 

Like a deck of cards fanning out between them Bruce could see in a way he hadn't really thought about before how many things they had in common - too many brains, too few friends, horrible family lives and a passion for fairness. It came to him in a flash that, though there were other people who loved Tony, like Pepper and ... well, Pepper, and the rest of the team and some of Tony's other employees, Bruce might well be the only person Tony could really call both a peer and a friend.

He felt stupid - he should have realized it sooner - and Tony looked so raw and damaged that Bruce's instinct was to somehow bandage him.

He didn't know what to do. He had for a long time believed he could best care for the people who mattered to him by staying away from them. It had been so long since remaining near them was even a possibility that he'd forgotten how it felt. He wasn't sure how much of him remembered how to do it - stick around. He wasn't sure how much of his reaction to the idea was intellectual or emotional. It felt wrong and right at the same time, and it would take a little time to think.

"I guess I do need some more thinking time, and this is - " he gestured around the tower "- a great place to think."

He just stood there while Tony still didn't meet his eyes. Bruce wasn't really waiting for him to; it just seemed awkward to go.

He said, "Food. Is a great thing. For pretty much everyone. Why don't I go see what there is for dinner."

There were people for that - lots of people for that - but Tony didn't challenge it as an excuse. "Sure. Give me an hour and then let's eat."

It didn't matter if it were an hour or a month, Bruce knew as he turned and let himself out of the workshop. Tony wasn't looking for a reliable dinner date. Tony just didn't want him to go.

Bruce took his time getting to the elevator, rearranging quite a bit of the inside of his brain space as he did so.


End file.
